Frantic Flailing of Feet
by Cherry13
Summary: One-shot fluff fic about two ancient vampires attempting to play DDR.


A bit of backstory on the characters first.  
  
A friend of mine and I do free-form Vampire roleplay. The two characters in this story, V and Amarilli are older vampires, both schooled in traditional dance. Kari and I were playing DDR Max 2 and thought of how fun it would be to see our characters attempting DDR.  
  
Enjoy!  
  
"Wait...what are we doing again?"  
  
V slid off her zaori hesitantly, and stepped barefoot onto the dance pad.  
  
"This is a game. You have to step on the arrows when it is their turn."  
  
Amarilli paused long enough in her fiddling with the memory card and controller inputs to gesture to the dance pad V was standing on.  
  
"I'm not sure I'll be able to play this competently."  
  
V watched the arrow move on the demonstration, and even tried to imitate the steps. Beneath the thick white makeup, her cheeks flushed a bit red.  
  
"Yes, I am fairly sure that I'll not be doing so well."  
  
"Oh come now..."  
  
Amarilli chided good-naturedly as she stepped onto her own pad and swept her hair back.  
  
"I watched children do this during Carneval. Surely if children can do it, we can do it also, si?"  
  
"Wait. What is this 'Nonstop' mode? Surely it would be a better idea to start at the easiest level available?"  
  
"Non non...Children dance on the easiest mode. Surely we might begin at a more difficult place. After all, between the two of us, all of our years of dancing will make it more simple."  
  
V severely doubted this, but she did not voice her concerns. Japanese dance was little more than choreographed waving of arms, and western European..well...it was not this frenzied flailing of feet that she suspected was about to occur.  
  
"Very well. But if we do not do so well, then I will stand by my earlier comment of perhaps learning to play the game first."  
  
"I can agree to that..."  
  
Amarilli grinned broadly and started up the song choices. After a moment of study, she crinkled her nose and turned to V.  
  
"What is this 'roulette'? That is a word I do not know."  
  
"I too, am unfamilar with it. In my limited western understanding, I think this applies to a game of chance."  
  
V gestured to the screen of the TV.  
  
"Though, I must say, I am not quite sure which song would be good to start out at. Perhaps this 'roulette' means that it will automatically select the best song for us."  
  
Well, it was a better logic than the Italiana had come up with. With a shrug of shoulders, she tapped that option with a foot and watched as the song choices began to spin rapidly....  
  
And waited for it to make a choice.  
  
For perhaps two or three minutes, the pair stood on the dance pads, with arms hanging at their sides. V reached up to scratch at the back of her neck. Amarilli fiddled with her sleeves.  
  
"Do you think it requires another push on the button, perhaps?"  
  
V looked to the Italiana.  
  
Amarilli pursed her lips and waited another half minute silently while the wheel on the TV continued to spin.  
  
"Hmmmm....Forse..."  
  
Finally she reached with a foot and tapped the pad again, laughing as it slowed and came to a stop.  
  
"What do you suppose the blue color of the title suggests?"  
  
"I am not sure, my friend. But I have always liked the colour blue, so perhaps this is a good omen."  
  
The TV screen lit up with brillant colours...brillant enough for V to wince in appreciation of the technicolour orgy before her. The bass beat started, frantic, and she even bobbed a bit, trying to get used to the tempo.  
  
Amarilli nodded her acquiescence and prepared for the music. She instantly picked up the beat of the frenzied bass, rising onto her toes and back to her heels in tempo. When the arrows began scrolling up the screen, she grinned brightly and took the first few steps with ease.  
  
"See? This is not so difficult..."  
  
"Well, the name of the song was 'Kind Lady..' Perhaps aptly named, yes?"  
  
V missed an arrow at first, but then began to step in time. Her eyes widened however, when two arrows acsended simultaneously.  
  
"Wait...two? What...?"  
  
Amarilli missed the combination of the two arrows at first and paused to regain her footing. Not long after, however, another two arrows began their way up the screen and she leapt lightly to touch the corresponding buttons on the pad.  
  
"Jump for them, si? You must hit them both at once."  
  
"Oh."  
  
V made a valiant effort to leap towards the next ascending row, and then backpeddled furiously to hit the back step immediately after. She scowled at the sceen as the announcer said something to the effect of "Calm down." She watched a 'Boo' appear in the background, and it barely had time to register before she was leaping towards the next set. These too, she missed.  
  
"I...."  
  
"Children, amica..." Amarilli chided between steps and she decided that had she need for it, she might be quite out of breath now. The Italiana, despite years of musical training, had her own fair share of boos and stepped frantically to keep her life bar on the screen green.  
  
"Children can do this."  
  
"So they say." V's tone turned sarcastic. "The little ones might be more inclined towards dance than we..."  
  
Her thoughts dropped, and in desperation, she hitched the hem of her kimono and began jumping every which way, planting her feet on two sensors whenever she could. Up and down, left and right, triangle, and square. It didn't really matter.  
  
"Non non! You must follow the pattern!"  
  
Amarilli cried out in vain to her partner, though she was having quite the difficult time herself. Arrows seemed to come from EVERYWHERE until the screen was completely filled with them.  
  
"YOU follow the pattern!"  
  
In a last ditch attempt, fueled by the flashing "Danger!" icon in the background, and the blinking red life bar at the top of her portion of the screen, V looked downwards at her feet, then tried one last time to synchronize her steps to the beat and the arrows. It was in vain, however. It seemed that if one missed only one arrow, then you were, for lack of a better term, screwed.  
  
"I'm tryi-..."  
  
But Amarilli's plea was a half-second too late as all the arrows stopped and the screen went black. A large green 'Game Over' materialized on the screen and she stopped her feet and crinkled her nose.  
  
"That did not go at all well."  
  
"I'd say that would be an understatement."  
  
V glared at the TV as the ranking came up.  
  
"I am not used to being rated 'E' for anything in my life! 87 Boo's? This will not do!"  
  
Amarilli growled at her own ranking of 'E' and the 89 boos she managed to rack up. As the game started back to its opening screen, however, she looked towards V and smiled.  
  
"Again, then?"  
  
"Well, it is addicting in a small way. But this time...can we please start on the easier mode?"  
  
"Si...si. Easy it is then." 


End file.
